Music Producer input here. It’s sort of been a general rule of etiquette in production that piracy is fine if you intend to buy the product.
A lot of the better plugins can be very expensive and prior to subscription models, were limited in free trials. It can take some time to know if a particular plugin works with your workflow and gives you the results you like over multiple different projects.
I’ve always stuck with this. If I see something I like the look of, I’ll pirate it, use it over a bunch of projects and if I find myself relying on it then I’ll save up to buy it legitimately. Of course, there’s a fair bit of trust involved there, and a lot of people will be happy enough to keep the pirated version and try to find a new crack every time the DAW or plugin requires an update,
No chance I would have been able to afford half of the software I use in my workflow when I first started out, nobody can. But I eventually found my flow then caught up and paid it back.
I consider that ethical piracy. Or maybe I’m just justifying it to myself. But that’s how it was implied when I first started out in college and it’s a good system where you can still eventually support the small companies that make quality products that work for you.